The Person Behind The Persona

In 2012, when my colleagues and I were researching the role of the HR Generalist, as part of the people management trends research project, we spoke to tens of HR professionals. many of whom were working moms. When we asked them about the areas people management software should focus on they asked us to build software that did not waste their time. They said that HR administration is only one of the things in their life. Many of them were taking care of kids and caring for aging parents at the same time. My colleague Anke Doerzaph created the video below several months back, to capture the expectations of working moms from the tools they use at work. She picked the HR Specialist role to explain the findings. We wanted to understand the person behind the persona and build tools for that person.

Many members of this research team along with the development team went on to build SuccessFactors Employee Central. I decided to build on this research and use the persona for the SuccessFactors Employee Central story. In the upcoming seminar series on SuccessFactors, I will be telling the Employee Central story from this point of view. My colleagues Darrell Lew and Joe Chance will be there to highlight the ease of use and mobility in Employee Central among other things.